Trump’s lies cost many lives

Kudos to Brian Greenspun for his Sept. 13 column, “Trump is a clear and present danger to US.” In it, he argued that President Donald Trump has posed and continues to pose such a threat because dating back to at least February, he flat-out lied to us, saying that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu, would miraculously disappear and required no change to our lifestyles.

Greenspun correctly recognizes that nothing, absolutely nothing, justified those lies that have now resulted in more than 200,000 American deaths. Those deaths did not have to happen if Trump had leveled with Americans about the severity of the pandemic and the need for social distancing and mask wearing.

Instead, remember Trump and Vice President Mike Pence’s visits to hospitals without masks, their visits with red-state governors in Texas, Georgia and Florida without wearing masks, and the maskless Republican National Convention at the White House.

Greenspun appropriately ended his column by noting that Trump took an oath to protect us against people just like him. Likewise, former President Barack Obama recognized that, “If the people cannot trust their government to do their job for which it exists — to protect them and to promote their welfare — all else is lost.”